


The Ruin

by edenkings



Category: Talents Series - Anne McCaffrey
Genre: But It's canon, Deneb backstory, Gen, So the "Plague" thing is not only topical, The Rowan - Freeform, is anyone even still reading this fandom, no seriously it's a plague, this has been sitting on my hard drive for two years
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:13:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23609716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenkings/pseuds/edenkings
Summary: The events of "The Rowan" circa the Deneb incursion from Dean Raven's Point of View.
Relationships: Angharad "The Rowan" Gwyn/Jeff Raven
Kudos: 6





	1. PROLOGUE

**Author's Note:**

> The plague bit is not only very topical for 2020, but it's canon too!
> 
> I make no apologies for things I wrote nearly two years ago.

PROLOGUE

In the four-hundred years since the first Parapsychic centres opened under the auspices of Henry Darrow, humanity had taken several more giant steps forward. The founding of FT&T by, among others, Peter Reidinger I and Johnny Greene had allowed for the first of a new wave in interstellar transport ships. Rather than the years-long missions of previous colonial generation ships to Alpha Centauri, teleportation could enable instantaneous movement of people and materials, and it did, first to Capella, and then further onwards to Procyon, Vega and Spica. 

Humanity became a multi-planetary species.

Outposts were quickly established on several other worlds, but full colonisation of the first few planets would take decades, centuries even. Whole new worlds to explore, to settle, and to live free upon, the cramped confines of Earth becoming a distant memory.

First contact with an Alien species was inevitable. Two planets within near-space had been deemed off limits due to emergent species. While the space-capable alien Antarians were content to remain on their own planet, and within their own system for the most part, and take little to no notice of the affairs of humans, they could and did still appreciate the ability of those humans to explore, patrol and defend the worlds of this arm of the Milky Way. Unlike them, the Eridani had no wish to interact with other species, content to ignore the rest of the galaxy.

Further out, colony worlds were later established on Altair’s third planet, and Deneb’s fourth. Together, the planets agreed to form the Nine-Star League, with a centralised administration on Earth able to determine and guide humanity’s future path. The League would be responsible for the overarching economic and fiscal policies, the Worlds Health Service and the League Bank, as well as the Navy. Colonisation, and the financing of it would also be under League purview. Taxation of new planets, and of colonists was heavy, but necessary to fund humanity’s endeavours.

FT&T established centres, later renamed as Towers as the colloquial name increased in popularity, on all the central planets, and in most major cities. Demand for Talent services was high, and ever increasing despite the enormous expense. High-Talent ratings were rare, and the Primes rarest of all. Only a few had ever been found, and FT&T could not keep up with requests for stations. On the furthest away and newest planets, service was limited.

Events on Deneb, however, would mark a radical shift in humanity’s path.


	2. One

**ONE**

\--

Deneb, population 279,000, doesn’t rate the kinds of technology that would warn of what’s to come. They’re too far out for the sensor networks that the Navy has strung out between stars; and while FT&T’s reach is by magnitudes greater and faster than that of the Fleet, there’s no FT&T presence out on Deneb either. They’ve not yet bought more than their own extremely basic planetary sensor network, as the expense of doing so is rather crippling for a young planet. Likewise, Talents are plenty, but not trained to FT&T’s exacting standards. The kind of contracts that FT&T has in mind would take those Talents away for most of their working lives, besides. Thus, on Deneb they rely on their isolation in this part of space, and, to a degree, on clairvoyants within the populace.

Unfortunately, the people that came to Deneb in the first place, and in the second and third waves after that; the type of people who would settle on the most outward planet in the Star League, those hardy homesteaders who have turned their back on the excesses of the modern technocratic Earth… the people who founded Deneb were not the type to have had clairvoyance. Their genes run to less ephemeral Talents. Speaking over distance is useful. Instantaneous travel is useful. Vague snatches of futures-that-might-be are not generally so. There are a million-million possible futures, and only a fractional percentage of what is seen comes to pass. In a collective, their prophecies are more useful, pieces forming a more coherent, more probable whole. On Deneb, those who do See are heeded, for sure, but they are rare.

_burning metal and flames_

It’s now the third generation since the first colonists came, seventy-five years or so since the real colonisation efforts, and barely enough for them to scratch the surface of their beautiful new planet. The enormous not-quite-pine forests still stand, though they’ve cleared as much as they’ve needed (and a little extra) for building materials and for firewood. There’s room to grow, too, and extra grazing for the imported horses and cows, and the local edible herbivore they’ve taken to calling nuffalo, not-buffalo after the extinct Earth animal that they somewhat resemble.

There’s the city – Deneb City for proper, there’s the port a few klicks from that with the fishing and seaweed gathering fleets, and the western conglomeration of small towns surrounding the mine that’s rapidly becoming its own little city, officially named Westerville. Just “out west” for short, of course.

They’re not entirely backward on Deneb despite the stereotype, even if the hardy, long haired ponies are the main method of transport for the majority of people. They’ve future-proofed in their designs, they’ve built a little bigger that they’ve needed. Power’s only at 30% of total capacity with the two big dams fed by the lake in the hills above the city, and it gives them their drinking water besides. They’ve an actual road now, linking those three major population centres, to minimise reliance on air-travel. The education institute in the middle of town has just won another accreditation, this time for humanities, and they’re teaching tertiary in subjects that they don’t necessarily _need_ for the colony now. Still not medicine – for that you have to head off-planet – but they’re likely to get there within a decade. Things are looking up for Deneb – they’re pushing for another migrant wave as soon as they can get approval for it from the central governments, both on Deneb and on Earth. Moving people is an expense, and the Central Worlds make it look like they're doing the favour, rather than what’s really the other way ‘round. People are a resource, but they consume resource too.

There’s a big new apartment block – well, big for here – and Dean lives on the top floor. The fifth floor here on Deneb is a little different from the 105th, where he lived in Chicago in a tiny one-bed studio apartment in Linear 226, but the scenery is better. Here he’s got a view of the hills, and if he presses his face against the frame he can just make out the very edge of the family farm. Not that he would – at twenty-five and a trained surgeon, it’s just not dignified.

Dean’s third generation on one side of the family, second on the other. They’re a big clan, nearly two-hundred when they all get together. Both of his parents have a multitude of siblings, and there’s the grandparents, cousins, and other sundry relatives too. There’s been a few marriages between people he’s related too as well (thankfully they’re not related to each other), which muddies the water a little. Both sides have been here for what amounts to the beginning of Deneb’s history, and it’s with pride that they’re building the planet.

The family is talented, at least on their mother’s side. None of them have actual ratings, nor much in the way of training. FT&T doesn’t come out this far unless they absolutely have to – they don’t have a post on Deneb, though the planetary council has submitted a petition. According to them, there’s just no-one suitable for the job, not at the moment. Try again in another century. Primes are unfortunately all-too rare, and Deneb has nothing suitably valuable for them to want the expense of a full Tower, and their biggest export is engineering work (with a side order in small batches of rare-earth metals) but not in sufficient volumes to rate a Tower when subspace comms and cargo drones work well enough, even with the expected delays. Dean’s own weak-ish talent runs to microkinetics – an excellent thing in a surgeon, and he got training for it back in Chicago, but through the university, not FT&T. He’s run a few clinics here to teach the other Talented staff, which seems to go over well enough. Denebians are quite lax when it comes to the parapsychic arts unless it suits them to be otherwise, after all.

It’s set to be a normal day for Dean. He’s on the early shift, starting at 0600 of Deneb’s 27.3 hour day, as is normal for the surgical rotation. Deneb’s hospital isn’t as flashy as the one he did his internship at on Earth, in one of Chicago’s major hospitals, but it’s nice to be home, and that makes up for a lot of the things he’d be missing otherwise. He’s been back a year (next week), and it still feels a little strange. He missed Deneb’s lush greenery and open spaces when he was away, but then he also misses some of the conveniences of Earth, especially the variety of foodstuffs.

It’s just before 0500 now, and he’s drinking the local brew. True coffee doesn’t grow here, it’s too cold, and the plant too finickity, but they’ve managed a hybrid with a local plant that makes something almost-passably tasting, and still with the caffeine.

Outside, it’s a sky full of stars, clear and cold, and a few blinking red warning lights for the skimmers on the taller buildings. He’s not the only one awake, he knows – Dean’s talent has enough telepathy to hear the waking minds of the other residents around him. If he reached, he could likely hear the family, though that would only serve to wake his mother. She’s the real Talent in the family, with a ready ear. She’s also in the middle of what’s very definitely to be her last pregnancy. In her early-fifties, it’s very much a surprise but not an unwelcome one. The current youngest of his brothers is nearly nine, the eldest is thirty-two. He’s already got a multitude of nieces and nephews from his more domestically-inclined siblings, and it’s a little strange to think of as he sometimes still feels like he'd be too young and inexperience at life to be a parent, no matter what they say about surgeons and arrogance. His youngest sib will have nieces and nephews who are far older – and his next sister has her second due just about the same time and they’ll more than likely grow up together.

The day starts well, most do. Medical is not something that they’ve scrimped on, and many of the original colonists (aside from the obvious farming and mining types) were medics of various descriptions, fed up with the slow grinding bureaucracy of old earth medicine. First, do no harm became harder and harder to practice when middle and middling management idiocy encouraged skimping and penny-pinching, when paperwork replaced patients in their priorities. Dean had seen more passive, disinterested neglect and burnt-out obliviousness than outright maliciousness during his own time on Earth. He couldn’t say he himself was the absolute most conscientious of doctors when it came to his patients, but it had been wearying spending ten times more of his day with the papers, rather than his patients. He didn’t begrudge the original medics their choice in the slightest, and indeed had followed them back to Deneb.

It is the good kind of day, it ends as well as it starts, which is an unusual enough event as to be remarked upon amongst the surgical staff. Dean’s patients are doing well, the surgeries are nearly textbook, and the patient from last week who hadn’t fared so well through a massive abdominal surgery has come right and is being discharged back to Westerville’s rather rustic med centre. Dean’s (thankfully minimal) paperwork pile has migrated from the in-tray to the out-tray, and there’s a manageable half-dozen messages on the pad for tonight’s perusal, if he gets a chance. Unlikely, knowing his mother’s dinners, and it might just be over-breakfast’s easy reading instead.

He waves Sandy into the skimmer, and they talk about their day as they head to the house, Sandy, likewise comments on the rather pleasant calmness as Dean sets the skimmer down.

“None of that here,” Dean says wryly, tipping his head at the pack of small children racing after one of the dogs, with the remaining dogs trailing behind, tongues lolling.

Mother greets them at the door, one hand on her swollen middle, and Dean stoops to kiss her cheek hello, giving her a practiced look over. He’s not worried, Isthia has usually done well with her pregnancies, and children, especially the last few. “Advancing maternal age” is an epithet in this household, and even Isthia’s primary care provider hasn’t so much as _thought_ the words since the first time he made that mistake.

Isthia had popped out a half-dozen children in only a little less than a decade, before slowing. The eldest, Jerry, was married to his job, and at nearly thirty-two, the women in the family had nearly given up on finding him the girl that would settle him down. Jerry certainly hadn't the interest in finding one for himself, and often didn;t have the time, to be fair. The next two sisters, Halla and Cordie, had both married young to cousins in an agricultural family, and had settled down out west into raising a passel of children. Halla taught youngsters in what little free time she had between babes, though both of his sisters seemed determined to equal, if not beat, their mother’s fecundity. Jeff was next, twenty-eight and following his eldest brother into a life of bachelordom, it seemed, though not for lack of interest on the part of Deneb’s women. Esther lived out west as well with her husband, another farmer, and they were expecting their second. Dean, at twenty-five, was the youngest of the elder half-dozen.

Their mother had insisted on a break, half-time in the dozen babes she’d promised her spouse. She was, despite that break, making good on the promise of it. Sandy was the eldest of the second batch, spaced a little more generously. Sandy, Alexander for proper, was a medical technician now, having graduated over the summer from the locally run but unaccredited program. A girl and three boys followed, in that order, all of them still in school. They'd all been in single digits when Dean had left home for the local university at sixteen, and then for Earth two years later, and the youngest had only been a babe in arms then. The three boys were of an age with the eldest nieces and nephews, and the pack of them all sort of ran together into a blur of names and faces as a result. Babies weren't terribly interesting to sixteen year old boys, and not much more to him now, Dean had to admit. Add in the extended family – both his mother and father had multiple siblings as well as cousins of their own - and it was all rather a nightmarish mess of Ravens and the like.

“Who’s here?” He asks.

His mother wrinkles her nose, as Sandy disappears off in the direction of the snacks their mother has set out. “Your elder sisters can’t make it, but the rest are here, and Rhodri’s lot too. Oh, and your Aunt. And Besseva says she’ll be here soonish.”

Dean nodded, “I’d heard, she said to go ahead without her.”

Isthia smiles at him and pats his cheek. “Well, go on then before Sandy eats everything,” she says fondly. One of Rhodri’s sons arrives in the yard, and Dean knows they have a new arrival that Isthia will be wanting to fuss over.

Later, after the obligatory toasts and introductions to the new members of the clan, and well as a few pointed _introductions_ to some friend or other that he and his brothers just have to meet all of whom are _coincidentally_ female, the food is served and the children are let loose outside to run off their energy as the adults chat and share drinks. Later still, those tired children and tired (or tipsy) parents are handed into skimmers or onto ponies or found spare beds, or couches, or mats on the floor.

Dean, still nursing a drink finds his two elder brothers outside stargazing.

“And how many eligible young ladies were you introduced to?” Jerry asks with a tip of his glass.

Dean grins, “Only half a dozen.”

“Only!” interjects Jeff with a laugh.

Dean laughs too, looking back inside at his mother, who is asleep on the couch.

“Big changes are afoot, brother of mine,” he says with unconscious prescience, “but let’s not buy into mother’s dynastic notions just yet.”


	3. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mean, content warning for Canon-ical plague

**TWO**

\--

The first couple of patients don’t cause any worry. The symptoms they have – fever, cough, chills – are non-specific enough that those treating them don’t need a differential diagnosis. The cure for the common cold is still rest and fluids, and come back if you’re not better in a couple of days.

On the day three, there’s a few dozen, and the public health authority puts out a notice recommending sanitation and distancing efforts.

By the fifth day, they’ve seen nearly two hundred people before midday, and it’s chaos in emergency medicine. They’ve got four deaths – three elderlies and a baby, and microbiology is still stumped on just what this is. It’s a virus, that they know, but it isn’t one they have seen before and it’s not responding to the traditional antivirals. Occasionally, colony planets see something like this, brewed up from the melding of import and indigenous, the director of pathology says, shrugging, and he recommends quarantines to begin immediately.

They send a set of notes off to Earth on the subcoms via a departing merchant vessel for analysis, though it could be weeks before a reply, and so they’ll try figure out a course of treatment for themselves. By the end of day, public health establishes the quarantined zone, and declares an epidemic. The schools close, and the streets empty. Dean’s surgeries are cancelled, all bar the emergency and priority cases. Two wards of the surgical floor are sectioned off for the sick, and all but the most essential surgical and obstetric staff are shanghaied into treating them or to infection control. They’re given a refresher on level B hazmat, and then left to nurse the ill. Dean’s not terribly impressed – he’s a surgeon first and foremost and chose that to stay away from the infectious stuff.

By day seven, there’s 1500 total reported cases, but the rate of new infections is slowing, to everyone’s relief. A prophylactic shot has done the rounds, and the treatment they’ve come up with works, with a little tweaking, and they only lose two more, both of whom were brought in just too late for anything to make a difference. The wards are still full of poor souls coughing up green mucus, but at least they’re getting better, not worse.

By day eleven, there’s only four new cases reported during the whole of the dayshift, and public health releases them from quarantine. It’s with relief that Dean goes to the family home for dinner, as he’s been stuck on indifferent cafeteria food for nearly two weeks. Even the replicator in the staff common is better, and replicate food is terrible. There’s nothing like his mother’s cooking.

In contrast, the first few sorry souls who come in with the painful, weeping sores get a lot of attention. They’re still waiting on discharging the last few sick from the cold. It’s related, say pathology; and it’s deadly. The quarantine goes back up on day two of this new illness – Public Health are spooked, and that makes everyone rightfully nervous.

Two of the first five patients are dead from haemorrhage, and in less than twenty-four hours. Three dozen more have been admitted, all from small collection of homesteads about halfway between the city and the mines out west. By day four, there’s the discovery of a dozen dead, a whole family, in a homestead nearby. Their animals are dead too, the same bleeding and painful sores. In the hospital, they’ve lost ten, and the cases are coming from the western outskirts of the city, and the mines now too. Three hospital staff have contracted whatever it is. The incubation period is minimal, with symptoms occurring within 24 hours, proceeding to a haemorrhagic fever within a day. It’s highly contagious, and they’re losing people faster than they can figure out how to treat it. Antivirals merely slow it down, until Micro has a breakthrough, tinkers with the serum, and figures a work-around.

Day eight, version two, sees no new cases – three weeks of strict quarantine controls and the news bearing the names of the dead that has scared the population into compliance with them – and the fever has burnt itself out.

They lose 187 in total, including the mine’s primary talent, a T-2 telekinetic and telepath who ships in and out the majority of Deneb’s import/export. Her loss is huge – as far as they know, no one else has the telepathic reach to even try to make the rest of civilisation. They’re going to have to hope on subcoms or wait for an FTL liner to head this way, though none are due for weeks. In either case, the return time doubles what they’ll have to wait for a message to reach League headquarters on Earth, be read and actioned and replied to.

Either that, or hope that someone at FT&T notices their absence and comes looking. Unlikely, for at least a little while, as Deneb’s orders and shipments are irregular and a quick accounting finds that nobody has anything scheduled for pick-up or delivery any time soon. It seems they will depend on the sample they’ve sent off to Earth from their first plague. That this might be the one that triggers a look-see seems to be the biggest irony to Dean.

_they’re here_

The third plague is the worst yet. Respiratory symptoms again, but this time worse. The coughing starts within a day of exposure, and the afflicted are effectively drowning in their own fluids. The antiviral stocks are running dangerously low, and while they can manufacture more, they just don’t have enough synthesisers on the hospital grounds to keep up. They bring in any they can scavenge from outside workplaces and from vet, but there aren’t enough techs to run them. Anyone who can program, and who is still healthy, is roped into mass production.

They haven’t even come _out_ of quarantine, yet this one is spreading. It’s not limited to humans either, with vet reporting swathes of dead animals, domestic felines and canines as well as the farm ponies and cattle. A surveyor finds an entire wild herd of nuffalo dead in the pasturelands, while his colleague notes an area several thousand hectares in size full of dead and dying trees.

Plagues four through eight barely register interest, bar that they exist, and that the treatments (best guess) are as follows. It is desperation – a cocktail of anti-virals, antibiotics and anti-prions all in broad spectrum in a hope to buy time, until they can figure out which it is in specific and tailor the drugs accordingly. But the lab is hopelessly backed up and they have to triage. Children first, and the pregnant women. Then others, if they can.

They can’t. Not properly, not everyone. Not enough and not in time.

Dean finds out three days later, reaching out to the familiar comfort of his mother’s mind only to find it grieving, that his eldest sister is dead and her five children with her. His brother-in-law is in intensive care and he’s hanging on by the barest of threads. His youngest brother is sick too, but not as bad – Jerome had been staying with Halla as he and the eldest of his nephews were bosom buddies.

He has no time to spare, and even if he could, he cannot break the quarantine. He cannot go home, to see his remaining family. He has, he finds in a rare moment when he might reach out, lost a half dozen uncles and cousins. His grandfather’s brother, the eldest in the family and the only one remaining of those who came to Deneb from Earth is likewise not expected to live.

Sandy and his mother’s youngest sister Rakella are his primary points of contact – Dean has little by way of telepathic reach, but they are near enough to hear, even over the sounds and _sounds_ of the overcrowded hospital. He can, in a good moment, reach further and speak to others. Briefly, blessedly, but not enough. It is always, always accompanied by bad news.

Jeff is still frantically hard at work on the synthesisers. His brother, and the team he has cobbled together, have worked miracles. They cannot, by any stretch, make enough drugs to go around. But they’re damned well trying, and Jeff is begging, borrowing and stealing whatever he can to make this work. He’s taken his requests, and then his demands, to the top levels of planetary bureaucracy. Dean can feel his brother’s boiling frustration – Jeff is the strongest of them, talent-wise, and he fairly radiates whenever he feels strongly – but he is too bogged down in his own desperate twenty-five hour days to do anything more than the briefest of reach-and-touches. Mostly, though, he is too tired to try.

Jerome, who has been getting better, comes down with the next plague. At least, thinks Dean, he doesn’t linger.

The merchant carrier has pulled though for them, though. A broadcast from Earth has finally been received on the subspace coms. A flurry of exchanges via drone take place, several drones bearing messages appear at the com-point, and it’s a disjointed, hurried mess for the administration to get all of the information ready and sent off before the drone is retrieved. They damn the expense of it – and it will be phenomenally expensive. FT&T’s involvement blessedly drops the time it takes for messages to be replied to back down to hours, but the cost is extortionate. Their T-2 could have picked up from the half-way point, just, pulling on all the power from one of the dams, but they don’t have even that now. They broadcast on loop, hoping that a drone gets enough of the information they need to send before it’s ‘ported away to central worlds civilisation. The worst of it was always going to be the time delay between Deneb and the drone. They’ve planned for it, but Earth wants more information, more detail, more this, more that, more the other.

24 hours into their reconnection with the wider galaxy, and the sense that _Earth is just not GETTING it,_ had sufficiently spread by gossip to make it to even Dean’s ears. They are still absolutely refusing to send aid without more information, without more downpayment, without more contractual promises. Deneb’s debt has already doubled, and will pass tripled in the next few hours.

 _I don’t understand_ Dean tells his older brother in frustration _we did lecture after lecture on the public health stuff and just how important this is_

 _It’d be a different story if they could see it, if it had spread out as far as the rest of the worlds_ Jeff replies _if it was them…_ Jeff trails off, and in a moment of epiphany simply reaches out and plucks the soonest-to-be returned drone from the drop-point.

Dean boggles at the display of unexpected Talent, and leaves his brother to it. An hour later, the drone is despatched back to the halfway, and with it the information that there will be pick-ups, so send what we need because we’ll pay for it, damnit. Earth simply has resources that they don’t, and within hours the return drone bears message that an antibiotic serum is ready for pick-up. By the time Jeff retrieves the message, he has time enough to swear _loudly_ before he’s off to get the serum. Dean doesn’t hear Jeff’s conversation with _The_ _Rowan_ , he’s busy, but he hears about it later, in detail, from his mother.

The serum that they send goes ‘round a treat, and Earth has sent the formula (patented, of course, so at yet more great expense), so they’re synthesising more of their own. The whole atmosphere of the planet changes. There’s something to look forwards to now.

Dean teases Jeff, but only a little, as he can _tell_ his brother is _clearly_ smitten.


End file.
